In the dictionary, an affirmative Action is said to be an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups or women. Affirmative action has been the subject of increasing debate and tension in American society. It is an attempt by the United States to amend a long history of racial and sexual discrimination. But these days it seems to incite a nations internal division. Opponents of affirmative action say that the battle for equal rights is over, and that requiring quotas that favor one group over another is unpatriotic. The people that defend it say that providing advantages for minorities and women is fair considering the discrimination those groups tolerated for years. The debate has been more emotional than intellectual and has generated more tension. Affirmative action promotes equality in the workplace in such areas as hiring, training or promotion.

[...] Affirmative action is also needed to help black women to compete in today's corporate world. Black women in corporate America are still scarce: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic's report for 1984, among the classification "executive, administrative, managerial, and professional, specialty," there were only 1,474,000 black women of the total, as opposed to 22,250,000 white women of the total number of working women in this category. Another area affirmative action addresses is preferential hiring programs. Many times people of colour have been excluded from hiring pools, overtly discriminated against, unfairly eliminated because of inappropriate qualification standards, or have been rendered unqualified because of discrimination in education and housing. [...]

[...] Opponents of affirmative action want to see the "most qualified" people be hired, regardless of sex, race, age, etc. However, a person's experience should be taken into consideration during the hiring process and if certain groups are blocked from competing, when they are finally allowed to compete they may have every other qualification, but will lack what they were blocked at competing in the first place. It is estimated that 85% of the 26 million net new American workers in this decade will consist of women, minorities, and immigrants. [...]

[...] citizenship. During the Reconstruction, after the end of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868, making blacks citizens and promised them the "equal protection of the laws." In 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment was passed, which gave blacks the right to vote. Congress also passed a number of civil rights laws barring discrimination against blacks in hotels, theatres, and other places. However, the South reacted by passing the "Black Codes, " which severely limited the rights of the newly freed slaves, preventing them in most states from testifying in courts against whites, limiting their opportunities to find work, and generally assigning them to the status of second or third class citizen. [...]